give,' I said.

The lady turned her eyes to me with a look which I cannot forget, and
life seemed once more to be roused within her, but not the life of
pleasure; her eyes were full of loathing and fatigue and disgust and
despair. 'Are you so new to this place,' she said, 'and have not learned
even yet what is the height of all misery and all weariness; what is
worse than pain and trouble, more dreadful than the lawless streets and
the burning mines, and the torture of the great hall and the misery of
the lazar-house--'

'Oh, lady,' I said, 'have you been there?'

She answered me with her eyes alone; there was no need of more. 'But
pleasure is more terrible than all,' she said; and I knew in my heart
that what she said was true.

There is no record of time in that place. I could not count it by days or
nights; but soon after this it happened to me that the dances and the
music became no more than a dizzy maze of sound and sight which made my
brain whirl round and round, and I too loathed what was spread on the
table, and the soft couches, and the garlands, and the fluttering flags
and ornaments. To sit forever at a feast, to see forever the merrymakers
turn round and round, to hear in your ears forever the whirl of the
music, the laughter, the cries of pleasure! There were some who went on
and on, and never seemed to tire; but to me the endless round came at
last to be a torture from which I could not escape. Finally, I could
distinguish nothing,--neither what I heard nor what I saw; and only a
consciousness of something intolerable buzzed and echoed in my brain. I
longed for the quiet of the place I had left; I longed for the noise in
the streets, and the hubbub and tumult of my first experiences. Anything,
anything rather than this! I said to myself; and still the dancers
turned, the music sounded, the bystanders smiled, and everything went on
and on. My eyes grew weary with seeing, and my ears with hearing. To
watch the new-comers rush in, all pleased and eager, to see the eyes of
the others glaze with weariness, wrought upon my strained nerves. I could
not think, I could not rest, I could not endure. Music forever and
ever,--a whirl, a rush of music, always going on and on; and ever that
maze of movement, till the eyes were feverish and the mouth parched;
ever that mist of faces, now one gleaming out of the chaos, now another,
some like the faces of angels, some miserable, weary, strained with
smiling, with the